New Tire Sonnet

Be what you are, loyal commuting bike
And wear that thin racing rubber no more
Slick and fast and thin but indeed unlike
The touring tires your frame truly adores
Enjoy, embrace, and roll with new Michelin
Ignore foolish poets who might conflate
Absent friction with love to their chagrin
One two five psi will oft deflate
A Trek seven hundred yearns for a trail
With rack and panniers for food and for tools
Fast commuting instead just seems so pale
The province of lazy, dimwitted fools
Poor Jack sang quite well of living your call
My bike, take heed before we take a fall

I recently gave up on the tube-eating 700x23mm tire I've been using since the spring. On a bike with a lighter frame, or if I didn't have my panniers above it, or . . .

The point is, there are almost always reasons to continue to pursue a solution that doesn't quite work. As an engineer with academic ties, I see it most often in young students who feel they have to enter the field because they are "smart", and who spend their undergraduate years miserable because they are overworked and uninterested. Worse yet are the graduate students who do the same. Should I ever be directly responsible for such poor lost souls, there will be a periodic viewing of The Nightmare Before Christmas, or at least Poor Jack, to drive home the point that there are things you should only do because you're called to them.

Also, I'd been hoping that a couple recent shifts in my professional situation would lead to a "I AM THE PUMPKIN KING!" kind of moment. Alas, nothing ever works out like it should. So until then I'll transfer my existential angst to my favorite mode of transportation.

Apple-raspberry mini-pie

Technically, a "mini-pie" is a tart, but this is a pie blog. However, instead of a traditional extra-thick tart crust, this one had a very thin rolled whole wheat pie crust. It's a good one to serve for the mildly gluten intolerant, since there's no top and the filling can be easily separated from the crust.

Ingredients:

1/4 recipe whole wheat crust

2 large apples, peeled and chopped
1 cup raspberries
1/4 cup sugar
1 T cornstarch

Procedure:

Roll out the crust until it's very thin, then line a tart pan, preferably heart shaped, with it.
Preheat the oven to 350F
Combine fruit in a small bowl.
Mix the sugar and cornstarch in a smaller bowl.
Stir the sugar mix into the fruit.
Scrape into the crust-lined pan.
Bake 20min, or until the raspberry juices bubble.